Kyiv and Moscow suspend peace talks amid Mariupol prisoner swap row

Ukraine and Russia suspended negotiations to end the war on Tuesday as a row erupted over a possible prisoner exchange in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Kyiv's negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Ukrainian television that progress could not be made in talks if Russia did not recognize the situation on the ground. 'To this day, they live in a world where there is supposedly a Ukrainian Nazism,' Podolyak said, adding there was only 'Russian Nazism.' Russia earlier confirmed the end of talks. 'No, negotiations will not continue. Ukraine has practically left the negotiation process,' Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told reporters. German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Scholz and Zelensky had agreed 'that a diplomatic, negotiated solution between Ukraine and Russia' was necessary to end the conflict. Zelensky described his phone call with Scholz as 'quite productive,' with military support for Ukraine among the topics discussed, he said in his daily video address on Tuesday night. The head of the Russian parliament further fuelled mistrust as he spoke out against a prisoner exchange following the capture of Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol. Ukraine hopes for an exchange of the more than 260 of its own soldiers who had left the besieged Azovstal steelworks. 'In the past 24 hours, 265 fighters, including 51 seriously wounded, have laid down their weapons and were taken into captivity,' Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. The Russian ministry published a video showing the capture of the Ukrainians, medical treatment being administered and the injured being taken away. 'We are working on further stages of the humanitarian operation,' Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram. Several buildings were attacked in the western Russian region of Kursk on the border with Ukraine, Kursk Governor Roman Starovoyt announced. This could not be independently verified. At least 382 civilians have been killed and 1,096 injured in Donetsk alone since Russia's invasion, according to Ukrainian figures. His visit came days after the Russian-installed government in the Ukrainian province said it plans to appeal to Moscow for the right to become part of Russia. The developments in the war came as Sweden and Finland were on the verge of joining the western defence alliance NATO and the International Criminal Court (ICC) sent a team of 42 experts to Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes.